Natural capital. Approaches to economic assessment

Abstract

The problems of economic assessment of natural capital as the most important category of ecological economy are considered in the modern context of sustainable development. It is required to improve the procedures and methods for natural capital accounting in accordance with the international environmental and economic standards in the System of National Accounts. Historical features of transformation of the term “natural capital” are analyzed in terms of the natural resource and ecosystem approaches. The principles of economic assessment of natural resources are proposed. The compliance with these principles is a necessary condition of the qual-ity of information received. The formation of the structure of the natural capital accounts is analyzed in the case-studies of Great Britain as one of the first countries that switched to monetary reflection of ecosystem services in the national wealth and of a region of the Russian Federation in order to identify the structural uniformity of natural capital calculated in monetary terms. Data on the value of the underestimate part of the national wealth generated by forest ecosystems in Russia are obtained.